...in parts of Europe. The West Indian species has tall (50-centimetre [20-inch]) flower stems that bear 2-centimetre yellow-eyed blooms; S. angustifolium has smaller flowers. A Chilean plant, S. striatum, bears a spike up to 90 cm tall with clusters of creamy white blooms....

Spins are generally performed on either the back outside or the back inside edge of the blade. A sit spin is done in sitting position, with the body supported by the leg that controls the spin as the free leg extends beside the bent skating leg. The layback spin, usually performed by women, requires an upright position; the skater arches her back and drops her head and shoulders toward the ice.......

...a primitive, egalitarian Christianity such as he imagined to have existed before the time of Constantine the Great (d. 337). Chelčický’s teachings, most fully expounded in his Šít Víry (1440; “Net of the Faith”), gave rise to the sect of the Bohemian Brethren. The utopian, anarchistic vein of his thought influenced the novelist Leo....

A tactic similar to the sit-in, the sit-down, has been used by unions to occupy plants of companies that were being struck. The sit-down was first used on a large scale in the United States during the United Automobile Workers’ strike against the General Motors Corporation in 1937. See also civil disobedience....

a tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience. The demonstrators enter a business or a public place and remain seated until forcibly evicted or until their grievances are answered. Attempts to terminate the essentially passive sit-in often appear brutal, thus arousing sympathy for the demonstrators among moderates and noninvolved individuals. Following Mahatma Gandhi’s teach...

nonviolent movement of the U.S. civil rights era that began in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. The sit-in, an act of civil disobedience, was a tactic that aroused sympathy for the demonstrators among moderates and uninvolved individuals. African Americans (later joined by white activists), usually students, would go to segregated lunch counters (luncheonettes), sit in all available spaces, re...

in Hinduism, the consort of the god Rama and the embodiment of wifely devotion and self-surrender. Her abduction by the demon king Ravana and subsequent rescue are the central incidents in the great Hindu epic Ramayana (“Romance of Rama”). Sita was raised by King Janaka; she was not his natural daughter but sprang ...

The best-known playwright of this period is Agha Hashr (1876–1935), a poet-dramatist of flamboyant imagination and superb craftsmanship. Among his famous plays are Sita Banbas, based on an incident from the Ramayana; Bilwa Mangal, a social play on the life of a poet, whose blind passion for a prostitute results in remorse; and Aankh ka Nasha (“The Witchery of......

blue ice sheet, 12 miles (19 km) long, southeastern Alaska, U.S. It was originally named Sitaantaagu (“the Glacier Behind the Town”) or Aak’wtaaksit (“the Glacier Behind the Little Lake”) by the Tlingit Indians. Naturalist John Muir later called it Auke (Auk) Glacier, for the Auk Kwaan band of Tlingit Indians. In 1892 it was renamed for Thomas ...

...Exenatide has a longer duration of action than incretins produced by the body because it is less susceptible to degradation by an enzyme called dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4). A drug called sitagliptin specifically inhibits DPP-4, thereby increasing levels of naturally produced incretins. Side effects associated with these drugs are often mild, although pramlintide can cause profound......

...include the manufacture of firearms and swords and ebony work. The city contains one of the largest cigarette factories in India. To the southeast is the pilgrimage site and thermal springs of Sitakund. Pop. (2001) 188,050; (2011) 213,303....

city, north-central Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It is situated north-northwest of Lucknow, along the Sarayan River. Sitapur was a military centre under the British and contains a military cantonment. Located at the junction of several roads and rail lines, the city serves as a marketplace for grain and other crops. There are sugar a...

stringed instrument of the lute family that is popular in northern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Typically measuring about 1.2 metres (4 feet) in length, the sitar has a deep pear-shaped gourd body; a long, wide, hollow wooden neck; both front and side tuning pegs; and 20 arched movable frets. Its strings are metal; there are usually five...

...pious woman, and the two wives—a Chinese princess and a Nepali princess—of the first Buddhist king of Tibet, Srong-brtsan-sgam-po, were identified with the two major forms of Tara. The White Tara (Sanskrit: Sitatara; Tibetan: Sgrol-dkar) was incarnated as the Chinese princess. She symbolizes purity and is often represented standing at the right hand of her consort, Avalokiteshvara...

the most aquatic antelope, with elongated, splayed hooves and flexible foot joints that enable it to traverse boggy ground. Though common, even abundant, in African swamps and permanent marshes, the sitatunga is also one of the most secretive and least known of Africa’s large fauna. It is a member of the spiral-horned antelope tribe, Tragelaphini (famil...

radio or television comedy series that involves a continuing cast of characters in a succession of episodes. Often the characters are markedly different types thrown together by circumstance and occupying a shared environment such as an apartment building or workplace. Sitcoms are typically half an hour in length; they are either taped in front of a studio audience or employ canned applause, and t...

...of the work of the profession of landscape architecture. Defined as “the art of arranging land and the objects upon it for human use and enjoyment,” landscape architecture also includes site planning, land planning, master planning, urban design, and environmental planning. Site planning involves plans for specific developments in which precise arrangements of buildings, roadways,...

The use of a land tax as the chief source of revenue has often been proposed. It was favoured by the Physiocrats in 18th-century France. Probably the best-known exponent was a 19th-century American, Henry George. His Progress and Poverty (1879) drew upon economic analysis in the tradition of British economists David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill to argue persuasively for a single......

British-born Canadian biochemist who won (with Kary B. Mullis) the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a technique called oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis, which enabled researchers to introduce specific mutations into genes and, thus, to the proteins that they encode. Using site-directed mutagenesis, scientists have been able to dissect the structure and......

Site-specific recombination involves very short specific sequences that are recognized by proteins. Long DNA sequences such as viral genomes, drug-resistance elements, and regulatory sequences such as the mating type locus in yeast can be inserted, removed, or inverted, having profound regulatory effects. More than any other mechanism, site-specific recombination is responsible for reshaping......

...gender panerus. Other elaborating instruments are the wooden xylophone (gambang), the zither (celempung) with 26 strings tuned in pairs, an end-blown flute (suling), and a 2-stringed lute (called a rebab......

agreement in 1957 by the rival Colombian political leaders Alberto Lleras Camargo of the Liberals and Laureano Gómez of the Conservatives to form a coalition National Front government to replace the dictatorial regime of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Lleras and Gómez, who had met in Benidorm, Spain, in 1956 to discu...

in Irish folklore, a hill or mound under which fairies live. The phrase aos sídhe or the plural sídhe on its own (sometimes anglicized as shee) can denote fairy folk collectively. See also banshee. ...

peninsula, northern Greece, and a nomós (department) terminating in (east–west) the three fingerlike promontories of Kassándra, Sithonía, and Áyion Óros (Mount Athos). The promontories were once islands, and their isthmuses consequently are composed of loose sediments through which the Kassándra Canal was cut......

town, northeastern Algeria, near the Wadi Bou Sellam. As ancient Sitifis, it became important when the Roman emperor Nerva established a veterans’ colony there in 97 ce. Sitifis became the chief town of the province of Mauretania Sitifensis (created 297 ce) and remained so under Byzantine rule. The town declined until garrisoned by the French i...

city and borough, southeastern Alaska, historically the most notable Alaskan settlement. U.S. Situated 95 miles (150 km) southwest of Juneau, on the western coast of Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago, it is the only city in southeastern Alaska that lies on the Pacific Ocean....

...a small tree with conspicuous whitish, wartlike, porous markings, or lenticels; the aromatic-leaved American green alder (A. crispa or A. mitchelliana); the closely related but taller Sitka alder (A. sinuata); and the mountain, or thinleaf, alder (A. tenuifolia), a shrubby tree with yellow or orange-brown midribs on its leaves and a domelike crown of pendulous......

The Nootka cypress, yellow cypress, or Alaska cedar (C. nootkatensis), also called yellow cedar, canoe cedar, Sitka cypress, and Alaska cypress, is a valuable timber tree of northwestern North America. Its pale yellow hard wood is used for boats, furniture, and paneling. Some varieties are cultivated as ornamental shrubs, although forest trees may be more than 35 metres (115 feet) tall....

historic site in southeastern Alaska, U.S., that preserves remnants of Native American and Russian occupation of the area. The park is situated in the city of Sitka on Baranof Island in the Gulf of Alaska. The site was named a federal park by Pres. Benjamin Harrison in 1890. It was established as a natio...

...Karingana ua karingana (1974; “Once upon a Time”). Other writers in Portuguese include Luís Bernardo Honwana, Mia Couto, Lina Magaia, and Orlando Mendes. Bento Sitoe, the author of Zabela (1983), among other works, used Tsonga as the language of his writings. Since the 1990s new authors have emerged who address women’...

(species Sitophilus granarius), insect of the family Curculionidae (order Coleoptera), a common pest of stored grain. This small brown weevil is about 3 to 4 mm (0.1 inch) long. The female bores a hole in an individual cereal grain and implants an egg in it. The fleshy white larva feeds on and then pupates inside the grain, which may be of dried corn (maize), oats, wheat...

...not only for penetration and feeding but also for boring holes in which to lay eggs. This family includes some extremely destructive pests (e.g., the grain weevil Sitophilus granarius, the rice weevil S. oryzae, and the boll weevil Anthonomus grandis)....

The whitish larvae of the Angoumois grain moth (Sitotroga cerealella) attack both stored and growing grains, hollowing out the insides of kernels. The gray-coloured adult has blackish spots and a wingspan of about 12 mm (about 12 inch)....

town, in the state and emirate of Bahrain, located on Sitrah island in the Persian Gulf. An oil port, Sitrah handles not only the entire petroleum production of Bahrain but is also an export centre for oil fields in northeastern Saudi Arabia. A submarine and land pipeline runs northwest about 36 miles (58 km) across the Gulf of Bahrain and Bahrain island, from...

...extending almost 2.75 miles (4.5 km) into the gulf; at its end is a wharf at which oceangoing tankers dock. Aluminum from the smelter near Al-Rifāʿ on Bahrain island is also exported from Sitrah....

one of England’s most famous and politically influential families, represented by two branches, holding respectively the marquessates of Exeter and Salisbury, both descended from William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s lord treasurer. Burghley’s elder son, Thomas, was created Earl of Exeter, and his descendant the 10th Earl was made a marquess in 1801. This line has remain...

Nuthatches live around the world, except in South America. The best-known species in North America are the red-breasted nuthatch (Sitta canadensis), a stubby, grayish, rufous-breasted, 10-gram (0.35-ounce) bird that often boldly approaches humans in northern conifer groves, and the white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis), a grayish, black-capped, white-breasted, 21-gram......

river in east-central Myanmar (Burma), rising northeast of Yamethin on the edge of the Shan Plateau and flowing south for 260 miles (420 km) to empty into the Gulf of Martaban of the Andaman Sea. The broad Sittang River valley lies between the forested Pegu Mountains (west) and the steep Shan Plateau (east) and holds the main road and railway from Yangon (Rangoon) to Mandalay as well as the major ...

gemeente (municipality), southeastern Netherlands. Chartered in 1243, it was a domain of the dukes of Jülich from 1400 to 1794. It was then controlled by the French until 1814 and by the Belgians from 1830 to 1839. The municipality’s industries include the manufacture of chemicals, electronic components, and automobiles. The area’s once productive coa...

Austrian architect and town planner who propagated many ideas similar to those that the so-called Garden City advocate, Sir Ebenezer Howard, was advancing at the same time in England. Sir Raymond Unwin in England and Daniel Hudson Burnham in the United States were among the later town planners influenced by German and Austrian theorists, of whom Sitte was the most articulate....

any of about two species of Australasian birds of the genus Daphoenositta, sometimes placed in the nuthatch family, Sittidae, but many classifications group them in their own family, Neosittidae. They resemble nuthatches in build—short-tailed and large-footed—and in behaviour, but they are more or less streaked and make cup nests in forked twigs....

capital of Valais canton, southwestern Switzerland. It lies along the Rhône River, at the mouth of La Sionne River, southeast of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman). It originated as a Celtic and Roman settlement called Sedunum. Sion became the seat of a bishop in the late 6th century, and from 999 the bishops of Sion held the spiritual and temporal power in Valais, which they...

German Lutheran satirist whose bitterly brilliant but partisan writings graphically describe life in a Germany ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). His satires, which at times are tedious, also show an overwhelming moral zeal added to a sense of mission....

any of about 25 species of short-tailed, long-billed birds in the family Sittidae (order Passeriformes), known for their abilities to grip tree bark as they walk up, down, and around trunks and branches and to hang upside down on the underside of tree limbs as they forage for insects and seeds. For their abilities they are sometimes called ...

Teton Dakota Indian chief under whom the Sioux tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains. He is remembered for his lifelong distrust of white men and his stubborn determination to resist their domination....

Sitting Pretty (1948) was one of the year’s biggest comedy hits. Clifton Webb was nominated for an Oscar as the imperious Mr. Belvedere, an author doing research on life in suburbia. To that end he offers his services as a babysitter to a couple (Robert Young and O’Hara) whose three wild children have driven away every other caregiver; the film was popular en...

Sitting up, usually in blinds, is the most popular method of hunting waterfowl, with or without calling. It is called flighting in Great Britain. Hunting by calling involves waiting in hiding and making imitative noises by voice or with a call mechanism to attract the game. Game birds so hunted include ducks and geese, hunted from blinds near which decoys are placed, and wild turkeys, also......

...miles (14 km) long and 4 miles (6 km) wide, to the north. The island is separated from the mainland (south) by The Swale, a branch of the River Medway estuary, which gives its name to the district. Sittingbourne, on the mainland, is the administrative centre....

...had to divide his substantial army of infantry, cavalry, and elephants because his kingdom had been invaded from the west by Caesar’s ally Bocchus, king of Mauretania, and an Italian adventurer, Publius Sittius. Juba was defeated with the other adherents of Pompey at Thapsus, and his general in the west was killed by Sittius. Repulsed from Utica by Cato (Uticensis) and expelled from his....

river in east-central Myanmar (Burma), rising northeast of Yamethin on the edge of the Shan Plateau and flowing south for 260 miles (420 km) to empty into the Gulf of Martaban of the Andaman Sea. The broad Sittang River valley lies between the forested Pegu Mountains (west) and the steep Shan Plateau (east) and holds the main road and railway from Yangon (Rangoon) to Mandalay as well as the major ...

town, western Myanmar (Burma). It is the chief settlement of the Arakan region. Situated on the Bay of Bengal at the mouth of the Kaladan River, Sittwe occupies the eastern side of a hilly ridge affording shelter from the southwest monsoon. After the cession of Arakan to the British in 1826, Sittwe replaced Amarapura as th...

method of achieving artificial intelligence (AI). Traditional AI has by and large attempted to build disembodied intelligences whose only interaction with the world has been indirect (CYC, for example). Nouvelle AI, on the other hand, attempts to build embodied intelligences situated in the real world—a method that has come to be know...

radio or television comedy series that involves a continuing cast of characters in a succession of episodes. Often the characters are markedly different types thrown together by circumstance and occupying a shared environment such as an apartment building or workplace. Sitcoms are typically half an hour in length; they are either taped in front of a studio audience or employ canned applause, and t...

in dramatic literature, a comic form in which complicated conspiracies and stratagems dominate the plot. The complex plots and subplots of such comedies are often based on ridiculous and contrived situations with large doses of farcical humour. An example of comedy of intrigue is William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (first performed 1592–93), a humorous ex...

Situational collective violence is unplanned and spontaneous. Something in the immediate situational environment triggers a group to violent action. For example, in a barroom brawl, one group of patrons interprets messages sent by another group as a form of disrespect and feels it necessary to retaliate physically.Organized collective violence is planned violent behaviour. It is......

...that were published in Les Temps Modernes, the monthly review that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir founded and edited. These articles were later collected in several volumes under the title Situations....

Some of the individual objects used in funeral rites include situlae, Roman and Egyptian bronze libation jars with a handle on the tops; Indian Brahmanic terra-cotta jars with perforated bases, which are broken after their use in the aqueous purification of the pyre; and cages containing birds (Buddhist Japan), sometimes eagles (ancient Rome), released near the tomb after burial. There are also......

English poet who first gained fame for her stylistic artifices but who emerged during World War II as a poet of emotional depth and profoundly human concerns. She was equally famed for her formidable personality, Elizabethan dress, and eccentric opinions....

British family of writers. Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) attracted attention when she joined her brothers in a revolt against Georgian poetry. Her early work, which emphasizes the value of sound, includes Clowns’ Houses (1918) and Façade (1923), set to music by William Walton. Beginning with G...

In 1873, in the midst of painful differences with his father, he visited a married cousin in Suffolk, Eng., where he met Sidney Colvin, the English scholar, who became a lifelong friend, and Fanny Sitwell (who later married Colvin). Sitwell, an older woman of charm and talent, drew the young man out and won his confidence. Soon Stevenson was deeply in love, and on his return to Edinburgh he......

English man of letters who became famous, with his sister Edith and brother Sacheverell, as a tilter at establishment windmills in literature and the arts. His best-known books are his prose memoirs....

English man of letters who became famous, with his sister Edith and brother Sacheverell, as a tilter at establishment windmills in literature and the arts. His best-known books are his prose memoirs....

any of several aromatic herbs of the genus Sium, especially S. latifolium, belonging to the parsley family (Apiaceae), distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and Africa. They grow in moist areas, and some species are even partially submerged. All are perennial herbs with divided leaves and clusters of white flowers. S. sisarum, known as skirret, is cultivated for its ...

any of several aromatic herbs of the genus Sium, especially S. latifolium, belonging to the parsley family (Apiaceae), distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and Africa. They grow in moist areas, and some species are even partially submerged. All are perennial herbs with divided leaves and clusters of white flowers. S. sisarum, known as skirret, is cultivated for......

...Hemisphere and Africa. They grow in moist areas, and some species are even partially submerged. All are perennial herbs with divided leaves and clusters of white flowers. S. sisarum, known as skirret, is cultivated for its edible tuberous roots. The more common S. latifolium, however, is known to be poisonous to livestock....

The general election on March 12 in the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland resulted in a change in government as the social democratic Siumut party captured 42.8% of the vote and 14 of the 31 legislative seats to return to power after a four-year absence. Inuit Ataqatigiit, which had ousted the Siumut in the 2009 ballot, finished with 34.4% and 11 seats. Siumut leader......

...farmlands, and alpine pastures; the Sevan Basin, the hollow containing Lake Sevan, on the shores of which are farmlands, villages, and towns; Vayk, essentially the basin of the Arpa River; and Zangezur (Siuniq) in the extreme southeast. This last region is a maze of gorges and river valleys cutting through high ranges. It is an area rich in ores, with fields and orchards scattered here and......

town, central West Bengal state, northeastern India. Lying just south of the Mor River, Siuri is an important road and agricultural-trade centre; its chief industries include rice milling, cotton and silk weaving, and furniture manufacture. The water-control-system barrage for the Mor River irrigation project is 20 miles (32 km) to the northwest. Siuri was con...

...the slogan “More European culture! Be Estonians but remain Europeans!” For Suits and his followers this meant greater attention to form. With the Russian Revolution of 1917 emerged the Siuru group (named after a bird in Finno-Ugrian mythology). These Neoromantic poets reacted against Suits’s emphasis on formalism. Their emotional intensity was well-illustrated by Henrik Vis...

one of the main deities of Hinduism, whom Shaivas worship as the supreme god (see Shaivism). Among his common epithets are Shambhu (“Benign”), Shankara (“Beneficent”), Mahesha (“Great Lord”), and Mahadeva (“Great God”)....

Indian king (reigned 1674–80), founder of the Maratha kingdom of India. The kingdom’s security was based on religious toleration and on the functional integration of the Brahmans, Marathas, and Prabhus....

Indian king (reigned 1674–80), founder of the Maratha kingdom of India. The kingdom’s security was based on religious toleration and on the functional integration of the Brahmans, Marathas, and Prabhus....

In 1936 Swami Shivananda, who had been a physician, established an ashram and an organization called the Divine Life Society near the sacred site of Rishikesh in the Himalayas. This organization has numerous branches in India and some elsewhere. His movement teaches more or less orthodox Vedanta, one of the six schools of Indian philosophy, combined with both Yoga and ......

fossil primate genus dating from the Miocene Epoch (23.7 to 5.3 million years ago) and thought to be the direct ancestor of the orangutan. Sivapithecus is closely related to Ramapithecus, and fossils of the two primates have often been recovered from the same deposits in the Siwālik Hills of northern Pakistan. Other Sivapithecus remains have been fou...

Festivals in Kathmandu include, in spring, the Shivaratri and the Machendra Jatra with its procession bearing the image of the god Machendra; in late summer, the Gai Jatra (festival of the cow); and, in early autumn, the Indra Jatra, during which the goddess Devi, represented by a young girl, is carried in procession. Pop. (2001) 671,846....

(“Putrid Sea”), system of shallow inlets of the Sea of Azov that penetrate the northern and eastern coasts of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine. Syvash is an area of marshy inlets and coves on the western margin of the Sea of Azov, from which it is separated by the Arabat Spit, a sandbar measuring from 900 feet to 5 miles (270 m to 8 km) in width. ...

...resigned his post that July and persuaded the Association for the Defense of Rights of Eastern Anatolia to call a congress, which met in Erzurum July 23–August 7. At a second congress, in Sivas on September 4–11, the nationwide Association for the Defense of the Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia (Ottoman provinces in the Balkans) was formed, with a permanent representative......

In Karnataka the river bifurcates twice, forming the sacred islands of Srirangapatnam and Sivasamudram, 50 miles (80 km) apart. Around Sivasamudram are the scenic Sivasamudram Falls, comprising two series of rapids, Bhar Chukki and Gagana Chukki, plunging a total of 320 feet (100 metres) and reaching a width of 1,000 feet (300 metres) in the rainy season. The falls supply hydroelectric power to......

In Karnataka the river bifurcates twice, forming the sacred islands of Srirangapatnam and Sivasamudram, 50 miles (80 km) apart. Around Sivasamudram are the scenic Sivasamudram Falls, comprising two series of rapids, Bhar Chukki and Gagana Chukki, plunging a total of 320 feet (100 metres) and reaching a width of 1,000 feet (300 metres) in the rainy season. The falls supply hydroelectric power to......

(“Putrid Sea”), system of shallow inlets of the Sea of Azov that penetrate the northern and eastern coasts of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine. Syvash is an area of marshy inlets and coves on the western margin of the Sea of Azov, from which it is separated by the Arabat Spit, a sandbar measuring from 900 feet to 5 miles (270 m to 8 km) in width. ...

city, eastern Ukraine, in the valley of the Donets River. The city was founded in 1934 as the site of a new chemical complex, part of which was evacuated eastward during World War II. In 1951 and 1958 additional chemical industries were added, based on coke, and the complex has grown over the years. With nearby Lysychansk and Rubizhne, it is one of Ukraine’s major chemica...

a tributary of the Don River, southwestern Russia and eastern Ukraine. The Donets is 650 miles (1,050 km) long and drains a basin of 39,000 square miles (100,000 square km). Rising in the Central Russian Upland, it flows south past Belgorod, Russia; enters Ukraine and passes to the east of Kharkiv; swings southeastward and eventually reenters Russia; and then turns south to join the Don below Kons...

In 2009 a virus known as SIVgor, so named because it infects gorillas, was discovered to be very closely related to a newly identified strain of HIV-1. This discovery indicated that SIV had been transmitted from gorillas to humans....

...of intense medical investigation, particularly in the context of vaccine development. Most SIV vaccine research has been conducted by using macaques infected with either SIVmac251, SIVsmE660, or SIVmac239, which share key features with HIV-1, the predominant human virus. In the 1990s, studies in macaques revealed that vaccines made from specific strains of live attenuated SIV could provide......

SIV has been the subject of intense medical investigation, particularly in the context of vaccine development. Most SIV vaccine research has been conducted by using macaques infected with either SIVmac251, SIVsmE660, or SIVmac239, which share key features with HIV-1, the predominant human virus. In the 1990s, studies in macaques revealed that vaccines made from specific strains of live......